Deerfield convenience store clerk shoots would-be robber

DEERFIELD BEACH — A masked gunman who tried to rob a convenience store Friday night had the tables turned on him when the clerk shot the aspiring crook in the jaw, deputies said.

The would-be robber fell, investigators said, but started to get up and the clerk shot at him several more times. A co-worker got the suspect's gun away from him before calling the Broward Sheriff's Office.

The clerk is Samir Al-Madi, 25, a college student studying graphic arts who was working at his father's store, Snappy Convenience Store. The suspected robber is Alexander Brown, 24, an ex-con who's done two stints in prison on a drug conviction in 2004 and then for burglary in 2008. He was released in March 2009.

Brown is recovering at North Broward Medical Center, investigators said, and will go from a hospital bed straight to jail on charges of armed robbery, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of an altered firearm.

"He put the gun in his face," Al-Madi's father, Fares, said Saturday at the store. "He did not come to rob, he came to kill."

A visibly shaken and teary-eyed Fares Al-Madi said that his son, who he said nearly fainted after the shooting, is recovering.

"It could have been one of us who is not here anymore," he said.

Snappy is a community store with a regular clientele, Fares Al-Madi said. He said he opened the store 10 years ago, at 115 SE 10th St., and never had a problem until Friday.

The senior Al-Madi left the shop before the shooting. His son and a co-worker, who was in the back cooler area, were there around 9 p.m. when the attempted robbery happened. No customers were in the store.

On Saturday, customers walked in and out with purchases, conducting business as usual.

Fares Al-Madi takes pride in his store, lining it with security cameras, interacting with customers and bending to pick up crumpled paper from the floor. He said his son would eventually return to work there.